Another View: GOP's prescription for health care: Whine about it

In a blatant act of blackmail, opponents of health-care reform in Congress are threatening to shutdown the federal government to block "Obamacare."

The threatened government shutdown is nothing more than an ideological temper tantrum with reckless disregard for the broader interests of the nation.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, or ACA, certainly is imperfect, as is any creature of political compromise.

The law will require fixes to better achieve its goal-improving access to health care and curving rising costs.

But no serious policy debate can take place when one side is threatening to hold the nation's economic welfare hostage.

The most conservative elements of the House Republican caucus are demanding that any authorization to continue funding the federal government be conditional on repealing ACA.

This move comes after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled constitutional key portions of the law, popularly known as Obamacare.

In 2012, President Barack Obama won a decisive victory in his bid for a second term in an election in which the health-care reform law was a critical issue.

Democratic candidates out-polled Republicans in the 2012 congressional races and chipped away at the GOP majority in the House.

The Republican-led House has voted 40 times to repeal Obamacare, a measure killed each time in the Senate where Democrats hold the majority.

Congress has until Sept. 30 to pass appropriations bills to fund federal operations or at least pass what's known as a continuing resolution, allowing the government to keep paying its bill.

Those bills include things like pay for federal employees. If the government can't pay its workers, they will be sent home. If the workers are sent home, many federal offices will be forced to close.

Oct. 1 also is opening day for the national Health Insurance Marketplace and state-run exchanges, through which individuals and small businesses can buy private insurance policies that will kick in Jan. 1.

Republicans also have threatened to make increasing the debt ceiling - the limit on how much Washington can borrow to fund spending already approved by Congress - an issue, and that will have to be dealt with by mid -to late October.

Failing to raise the debt ceiling leaves government with the possibility of defaulting on its debt and shaking the foundation of the U.S. and world credit markets.

President Obama has called using the debt ceiling as a "bargaining chip" in the health-care debate "irresponsible."

How is extending access health care to more Americans such a monstrous evil that must be stopped at all costs?

--The Burlington (Vt.) Free Press

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Another View: GOP's prescription for health care: Whine about it

In a blatant act of blackmail, opponents of health-care reform in Congress are threatening to shutdown the federal government to block 'Obamacare.'